Meditators are often just given the instructions "be mindful in daily life." But, as we all know, the vagueness of these instructions make being mindful in daily life sound deceptively easy. After five minutes, a number of obvious questions will arise in someone who is earnestly trying to be mindful: "...HOW?!...WHY?!... What's the point?" -- "What am I supposed to be mindful of... and what am I NOT supposed to be mindful of?" -- "What does 'being mindful' of something actually mean, anyway?" Sometimes you'll come across publications that try to go a little further into detail, but you usually just get even more vague instructions, like "when washing the dishes, just wash the dishes" which makes doing the dishes sound like it should be some sort of intimate, sensual experience where enlightment is just ready to pop out of every little bubble of soap that floats up from the sink.

So, at the end of the day, the meditator is left with the task of being mindful and is left to his own devices. My intention with this thread is to create a forum where we can share what works for us, the practical bits of advice that are not often included in Buddhist publications or taught by teachers. Hopefully, we can help anyone else who is struggling to figure out what this mindfulness thing is all about and keep any newcomers from losing heart and giving up.

One technique that I recently created for myself is alternating between awareness of the four postures (sitting, standing, lying, walking) and switching back to being aware of the sensations that arise from the dominant activity that I am performing at that time. In daily activities, I have only been noting the posture twice (standing...standing...) before switching to the dominant activity, which I also note twice (reaching...reaching...). I have noticed that this quick oscillation between posture and the dominant activity can 1. keep up with the pace of everyday life without making me move as slow as an elderly turtle; 2. works within the framework of the Satipatthana Sutta (mindfulness of body); 3. Stops me from stressing about the tiny details that go under the radar "Oh! I should have been more mindful of the sound of that gnat hitting the windshield! Why oh why isn't my mindfulness strong enough ?!?!!?" With this method, you quickly learn what the term "the most dominant action" means when you've only got a split second to choose; and 4. It acts as a natural reminder to stay mindful by not allowing any gaps in your mindfulness: when you limit yourself to two notes per posture/activity, a natural rhythm and momentum builds up that can help us maintain mindfulness with long-lasting objects that we normally easily lose mindfulness of: "Seeing cloud....Seeing cloud... Seeing....Cloud... Clo--- ....OH, ICE CREAM TRUCK!!! "

A few notes:1. For the music geeks out there, I've been noting at the rate of 60-70 beats per minute.2. I don't say the objects in my head (carrot, pot, etc.), but I had to illustrate it somehow. 3. Also, your mindfulness should be energetic, bright and bouncy and should "jump" and cover all of the sensations in the legs (muscle tension, pressure from pushing up against counter with thighs) and the feet (pressure, heat, etc). Same with peeling: we obviously know what were doing, there's no need to remind ourselves that we're peeling a carrot. 4. You should not have any mental images or mental concepts of yourself doing the action. The mindfulness should be firmly connected to the sensation of the vibrations felt when peeling the carrot, the feeling of the little bits of cold juice that splash onto the skin, the feeling of your muscles pulling the peeler down, the resistance, etc. 4. For complex activities, (reading, studying, thinking) I've dropped the switching and the noting completely and simply focused on using "bare mindfulness" to wholeheartedly focus on the task at hand.

This little method just came to me one day, and I soon found out that doing this method meant the difference between being able to maintain mindfulness in little intermittent bursts of a few seconds to being able to do it for hours on end (with the occasional gap, of course... I'm human, after all. ). As my mindfulness and concentration develop, I can see how I might drop switching between the posture and the activity and just stay with one or the other, or start incorporating smaller details than I am currently incapable of being aware of. I could also start noting 3, 4, 5 times until my "bare mindfulness" is strong enough to stay with the object without the crutch of the mental noting.

Does anyone else have any "best practices" that you've developed? I hope this thread proves to be useful to us all!

Kabouterke wrote:I could also start noting 3, 4, 5 times until my "bare mindfulness" is strong enough to stay with the object without the crutch of the mental noting.

I've found noting to be very helpful for maintaining mindfulness, but I don't do it continuously. Typically I will use noting for a change of posture, eg "sitting", or for a new activity, eg "walking". Additionally I use the framework of the 6 sense bases, eg "seeing", "hearing", "thinking", "feeling". Note that these cover the 4 frames of reference ( satipatthana ).

"I ride tandem with the random, Things don't run the way I planned them, In the humdrum."Peter Gabriel lyric

Ask myself "What's happening now?" And remain open to what arises. Become aware of my body, what it feels like to be "in my skin." Go soft eyes / soft mind and take in the whole, rather than focussing on parts. See the apparently fixed objects around me as dynamic processes, each in their own timeframe.

And, very important: I don't try to be mindful all the time! That just drives me crazy. What works better for me is to be mindful in relatively short stretches many times a day.

Mindfulness is one of the side effects of meditation. During meditation, we are training our minds to be one pointed like a spear. As practice continues, the hope is that your mind will function like this throughout the day. I like the analogy of mindfulness being like walking with a bowl of hot soup on your head, you probably would not want to be thinking about much else other than taking each step slowly and securely as to not drop the hot bowl of soup.

What is the point?I remind myself the purpose of mindfulness. My body is always present here and now. It cannot be anywhere else but my mind is not bounded by space or time. I could be sitting here but my mind is dwelling in another time and place (daydreaming). Throughout the day, I remind myself to be present and pay attention to what is happening right here and right now especially when I am driving

And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, & from idle chatter: This is called right speech.

Then the way for the other factors to be Right in the present moment will be clear.

Metta,Retro.

If you have asked me of the origination of unease, then I shall explain it to you in accordance with my understanding: Whatever various forms of unease there are in the world, They originate founded in encumbering accumulation. (Pārāyanavagga)

Exalted in mind, just open and clearly aware, the recluse trained in the ways of the sages:One who is such, calmed and ever mindful, He has no sorrows! -- Udana IV, 7

One tries to abandon wrong view & to enter into right view: This is one's right effort.One is mindful to abandon wrong view & to enter & remain in right view: This is one's right mindfulness.Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right view

Every musician plays scales. When you begin to study the piano, that's the first thing you learn, and you never stop playing scales. The finest concert pianists in the world still play scales. It's a basic skill that can't be allowed to get rusty.

Every baseball player practices batting. It's the first thing you learn in Little League, and you never stop practicing. Every World Series game begins with batting practice. Basic skills must always remain sharp.

Seated meditation is the arena in which the meditator practices his own fundamental skills. The game the meditator is playing is the experience of his own life, and the instrument upon which he plays is his own sensory apparatus. Even the most seasoned meditator continues to practice seated meditation, because it tunes and sharpens the basic mental skills he needs for his particular game. We must never forget, however, that seated meditation itself is not the game. It's the practice. The game in which those basic skills are to be applied is the rest of one's experiential existence. Meditation that is not applied to daily living is sterile and limited.

The purpose of Vipassana meditation is nothing less than the radical and permanent transformation of your entire sensory and cognitive experience. It is meant to revolutionize the whole of your life experience. Those periods of seated practice are times set aside for instilling new mental habits. You learn new ways to receive and understand sensation. You develop new methods of dealing with conscious thought, and new modes of attending to the incessant rush of your own emotions. These new mental behaviors must be made to carry over into the rest of your life.

Otherwise, meditation remains dry and fruitless, a theoretical segment of your existence that is unconnected to all the rest. Some effort to connect these two segments is essential. A certain amount of carry-over will take place spontaneously, but the process will be slow and unreliable. You are very likely to be left with the feeling that you are getting nowhere and to drop the process as unrewarding.

One of the most memorable events in your meditation career is the moment when you first realize that you are meditation in the midst of some perfectly ordinary activity. You are driving down the freeway or carrying out the trash and it just turns on by itself. This unplanned outpouring of the skills you have been so carefully fostering is a genuine joy. It gives you a tiny window on the future. You catch a spontaneous glimpse of what the practice really means. The possibility strikes you that this transformation of consciousness could actually become a permanent feature of your experience. You realize that you could actually spend the rest of your days standing aside from the debilitating clamoring of your own obsessions, no longer frantically hounded by your own needs and greed. You get a tiny taste of what it is like to just stand aside and watch it all flow past. It's a magic moment.

That vision is liable to remain unfulfilled, however, unless you actively seek to promote the carry-over process. The most important moment in meditation is the instant you leave the cushion. When your practice session is over, you can jump up and drop the whole thing, or you can bring those skills with you into the rest of your activities.

It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it's not just a set of mental exercises. Meditation is a cultivation of mindfulness and the application of that mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate. You can meditate while washing the dishes. You can meditate in the shower, or roller skating, or typing letters. Meditation is awareness, and it must be applied to each and every activity of one's life. This isn't easy.

We specifically cultivate awareness through the seated posture in a quiet place because that's the easiest situation in which to do so. Meditation in motion is harder. Meditation in the midst of fast-paced noisy activity is harder still. And meditation in the midst of intensely egoistic activities like romance or arguments is the ultimate challenge. The beginner will have his hands full with less stressful activities.

Yet the ultimate goal of practice remains: to build one's concentration and awareness to a level of strength that will remain unwavering even in the midst of the pressures of life in contemporary society. Life offers many challenges and the serious meditator is very seldom bored.

Carrying your meditation into the events of your daily life is not a simple process. Try it and you will see. That transition point between the end of your meditation session and the beginning of 'real life' is a long jump. It's too long for most of us. We find our calm and concentration evaporating within minutes, leaving us apparently no better off than before. In order to bridge this gulf, Buddhists over the centuries have devised an array of exercises aimed at smoothing the transition. They take that jump and break it down into little steps. Each step can be practiced by itself.

1. Walking Meditation

Our everyday existence is full of motion and activity. Sitting utterly motionless for hours on end is nearly the opposite of normal experience. Those states of clarity and tranquility we foster in the midst of absolute stillness tend to dissolve as soon as we move. We need some transitional exercise that will teach us the skill of remaining calm and aware in the midst of motion. Walking meditation helps us make that transition from static repose to everyday life. It's meditation in motion, and it is often used as an alternative to sitting. Walking is especially good for those times when you are extremely restless. An hour of walking meditation will often get you through that restless energy and still yield considerable quantities of clarity. You can then go on to the seated meditation with greater profit.

Standard Buddhist practice advocates frequent retreats to complement your daily sitting practice. A retreat is a relatively long period of time devoted exclusively to meditation. One or two day retreats are common for lay people. Seasoned meditators in a monastic situation may spend months at a time doing nothing else. Such practice is rigorous, and it makes sizable demands on both mind and body. Unless you have been at it for several years, there is a limit to how long you can sit and profit. Ten solid hours of the seated posture will produce in most beginners a state of agony that far exceeds their concentration powers. A profitable retreat must therefore be conducted with some change of posture and some movement. The usual pattern is to intersperse blocks of sitting with blocks of walking meditation. An hour of each with short breaks between is common.

To do the walking meditation, you need a private place with enough space for at least five to ten paces in a straight line. You are going to be walking back and forth very slowly, and to the eyes of most Westerners, you'll look curious and disconnected from everyday life. This is not the sort of exercise you want to perform on the front lawn where you'll attract unnecessary attention. Choose a private place.

The physical directions are simple. Select an unobstructed area and start at one end. Stand for a minute in an attentive position. Your arms can be held in any way that is comfortable, in front, in back, or at your sides. Then while breathing in, lift the heel of one foot. While breathing out, rest that foot on its toes. Again while breathing in, lift that foot, carry it forward and while breathing out, bring the foot down and touch the floor. Repeat this for the other foot. Walk very slowly to the opposite end, stand for one minute, then turn around very slowly, and stand there for another minute before you walk back. Then repeat the process. Keep you head up and you neck relaxed. Keep your eyes open to maintain balance, but don't look at anything in particular. Walk naturally. Maintain the slowest pace that is comfortable, and pay no attention to your surroundings. Watch out for tensions building up in the body, and release them as soon as you spot them. Don't make any particular attempt to be graceful. Don't try to look pretty. This is not an athletic exercise, or a dance. It is an exercise in awareness. Your objective is to attain total alertness, heightened sensitivity and a full, unblocked experience of the motion of walking. Put all of your attention on the sensations coming from the feet and legs. Try to register as much information as possible about each foot as it moves. Dive into the pure sensation of walking, and notice every subtle nuance of the movement. Feel each individual muscle as it moves. Experience every tiny change in tactile sensation as the feet press against the floor and then lift again.

Notice the way these apparently smooth motions are composed of complex series of tiny jerks. Try to miss nothing. In order to heighten your sensitivity, you can break the movement down into distinct components. Each foot goes through a lift, a swing; and then a down tread. Each of these components has a beginning, middle, and end. In order to tune yourself in to this series of motions, you can start by making explicit mental notes of each stage.

Make a mental note of "lifting, swinging, coming down, touching floor, pressing" and so on. This is a training procedure to familiarize you with the sequence of motions and to make sure that you don't miss any. As you become more aware of the myriad subtle events going on, you won't have time for words. You will find yourself immersed in a fluid, unbroken awareness of motion. The feet will become your whole universe. If your mind wanders, note the distraction in the usual way, then return your attention to walking. Don't look at your feet while you are doing all of this, and don't walk back and forth watching a mental picture of your feet and legs. Don't think, just feel. You don't need the concept of feet and you don't need pictures. Just register the sensations as they flow. In the beginning, you will probably have some difficulties with balance. You are using the leg muscles in a new way, and a learning period is natural. If frustration arises, just note that and let it go.

The Vipassana walking technique is designed to flood your consciousness with simple sensations, and to do it so thoroughly that all else is pushed aside. There is no room for thought and no room for emotion. There is no time for grasping, and none for freezing the activity into a series of concepts. There is no need for a sense of self. There is only the sweep of tactile and kinesthetic sensation, an endless and ever-changing flood of raw experience. We are learning here to escape into reality, rather than from it. Whatever insights we gain are directly applicable to the rest of our notion-filled lives.

2. Postures

The goal of our practice is to become fully aware of all facets of our experience in an unbroken, moment-to-moment flow. Much of what we do and experience is completely unconscious in the sense that we do it with little or no attention. Our minds are on something else entirely. We spend most of our time running on automatic pilot, lost in the fog of day-dreams and preoccupations.

One of the most frequently ignored aspects of our existence is our body. The technicolor cartoon show inside our head is so alluring that we tend to remove all of our attention from the kinesthetic and tactile senses. That information is pouring up the nerves and into the brain every second, but we have largely sealed it off from consciousness. It pours into the lower levels of the mind and it gets no further. Buddhists have developed an exercise to open the floodgates and let this material through to consciousness. It's another way of making the unconscious conscious.

Your body goes through all kinds of contortions in the course of a single day. You sit and you stand. You walk and lie down. You bend, run, crawl, and sprawl. Meditation teachers urge you to become aware of this constantly ongoing dance. As you go through your day, spend a few seconds every few minutes to check your posture. Don't do it in a judgmental way. This is not an exercise to correct your posture, or to improve you appearance. Sweep your attention down through the body and feel how you are holding it. Make a silent mental note of 'Walking' or 'Sitting' or 'Lying down' or 'Standing'. It all sounds absurdly simple, but don't slight this procedure. This is a powerful exercise. If you do it thoroughly, if you really instil this mental habit deeply, it can revolutionize your experience. It taps you into a whole new dimension of sensation, and you feel like a blind man whose sight has been restored.

3. Slow-Motion Activity

Every action you perform is made up of separate components. The simple action of tying your shoelaces is made up of a complex series of subtle motions. Most of these details go unobserved. In order to promote the overall habit of mindfulness, you can perform simple activities at very low speed--making an effort to pay full attention to every nuance of the act.

Sitting at a table and drinking a cup of tea is one example. There is much here to be experienced. View your posture as you are sitting and feel the handle of the cup between your fingers. Smell the aroma of the tea, notice the placement of the cup, the tea, your arm, and the table. Watch the intention to raise the arm arise within your mind, feel the arm as it raises, feel the cup against your lips and the liquid pouring into your mouth. Taste the tea, then watch the arising of the intention to lower your arm. The entire process is fascinating and beautiful, if you attend to it fully, paying detached attention to every sensation and to the flow of thought and emotion.

This same tactic can be applied to many of your daily activities. Intentionally slowing down your thoughts, words and movements allows you to penetrate far more deeply into them than you otherwise could. What you find there is utterly astonishing. In the beginning, it is very difficult to keep this deliberately slow pace during most regular activities, but skill grows with time. Profound realizations occur during sitting meditation, but even more profound revelations can take place when we really examine our own inner workings in the midst of day-to-day activities. This is the laboratory where we really start to see the mechanisms of our own emotions and the operations of our passions. Here is where we can truly gauge the reliability of our reasoning, and glimpse the difference between our true motives and the armor of pretense that we wear to fool ourselves and others.

We will find a great deal of this information surprising, much of it disturbing, but all of it useful. Bare attention brings order into the clutter that collects in those untidy little hidden corners of the mind. As you achieve clear comprehension in the midst of life's ordinary activities, you gain the ability to remain rational and peaceful while you throw the penetrating light of mindfulness into those irrational mental nooks and crannies. You start to see the extent to which you are responsible for your own mental suffering. You see your own miseries, fears, and tensions as self-generated. You see the way you cause your own suffering, weakness, and limitations. And the more deeply you understand these mental processes, the less hold they have on you.

4. Breath Coordination

In seated meditation, our primary focus is the breath. Total concentration on the ever-changing breath brings us squarely into the present moment. The same principle can be used in the midst of movement. You can coordinate the activity in which you are involved with your breathing. This lends a flowing rhythm to your movement, and it smooths out many of the abrupt transitions. Activity becomes easier to focus on, and mindfulness is increased. Your awareness thus stays more easily in the present. Ideally, meditation should be a 24 hour-a-day practice. This is a highly practical suggestion.

A state of mindfulness is a state of mental readiness. The mind is not burdened with preoccupations or bound in worries. Whatever comes up can be dealt with instantly. When you are truly mindful, your nervous system has a freshness and resiliency which fosters insight. A problem arises and you simply deal with it, quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss. You don't stand there in a dither, and you don't run off to a quiet corner so you can sit down and meditate about it. You simply deal with it. And in those rare circumstances when no solution seems possible, you don't worry about that. You just go on to the next thing that needs your attention. Your intuition becomes a very practical faculty.

5. Stolen Moments

The concept of wasted time does not exist for a serious meditator. Little dead spaces during your day can be turned to profit. Every spare moment can be used for meditation. Sitting anxiously in the dentist's office, meditate on your anxiety. Feeling irritated while standing in a line at the bank, meditate on irritation. Bored, twiddling you thumbs at the bus stop, meditate on boredom. Try to stay alert and aware throughout the day. Be mindful of exactly what is taking place right now, even if it is tedious drudgery. Take advantage of moments when you are alone. Take advantage of activities that are largely mechanical. Use every spare second to be mindful. Use all the moments you can.

6. Concentration On All Activities

You should try to maintain mindfulness of every activity and perception through the day, starting with the first perception when you awake, and ending with the last thought before you fall asleep. This is an incredibly tall goal to shoot for. Don't expect to be able to achieve this work soon. Just take it slowly and let you abilities grow over time. The most feasible way to go about the task is to divide your day up into chunks. Dedicate a certain interval to mindfulness of posture, then extend this mindfulness to other simple activities: eating, washing, dressing, and so forth. Some time during the day, you can set aside 15 minutes or so to practice the observation of specific types of mental states: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings, for instance; or the hindrances, or thoughts. The specific routine is up to you. The idea is to get practice at spotting the various items, and to preserve your state of mindfulness as fully as you can throughout the day.

Try to achieve a daily routine in which there is as little difference as possible between seated meditation and the rest of your experience. Let the one slide naturally into the other. Your body is almost never still. There is always motion to observe. At the very least, there is breathing. Your mind never stops chattering, except in the very deepest states of concentration. There is always something coming up to observe. If you seriously apply your meditation, you will never be at a loss for something worthy of your attention.

Your practice must be made to apply to your everyday living situation. That is your laboratory. It provides the trials and challenges you need to make your practice deep and genuine. It's the fire that purifies your practice of deception and error, the acid test that shows you when you are getting somewhere and when you are fooling yourself. If your meditation isn't helping you to cope with everyday conflicts and struggles, then it is shallow. If your day-to-day emotional reactions are not becoming clearer and easier to manage, then you are wasting your time. And you never know how you are doing until you actually make that test.

The practice of mindfulness is supposed to be a universal practice. You don't do it sometimes and drop it the rest of the time. You do it all the time. Meditation that is successful only when you are withdrawn in some soundproof ivory tower is still undeveloped. Insight meditation is the practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness. The meditator learns to pay bare attention to the birth, growth, and decay of all the phenomena of the mind. He turns from none of it, and he lets none of it escape. Thoughts and emotions, activities and desires, the whole show. He watches it all and he watches it continuously. It matters not whether it is lovely or horrid, beautiful or shameful. He sees the way it is and the way it changes. No aspect of experience is excluded or avoided. It is a very thoroughgoing procedure.

If you are moving through your daily activities and you find yourself in a state of boredom, then meditate on your boredom. Find out how it feels, how it works, and what it is composed of. If you are angry, meditate on the anger. Explore the mechanics of anger. Don't run from it. If you find yourself sitting in the grip of a dark depression, meditate on the depression. Investigate depression in a detached and inquiring way. Don't flee from it blindly. Explore the maze and chart its pathways. That way you will be better able to cope with the next depression that comes along.

Meditating your way through the ups and downs of daily life is the whole point of Vipassana. This kind of practice is extremely rigorous and demanding, but it engenders a state of mental flexibility that is beyond comparison. A meditator keeps his mind open every second. He is constantly investigating life, inspecting his own experience, viewing existence in a detached and inquisitive way. Thus he is constantly open to truth in any form, from any source, and at any time. This is the state of mind you need for Liberation.

It is said that one may attain enlightenment at any moment if the mind is kept in a state of meditative readiness. The tiniest, most ordinary perception can be the stimulus: a view of the moon, the cry of a bird, the sound of the wind in the trees. it's not so important what is perceived as the way in which you attend to that perception. The state of open readiness is essential. It could happen to you right now if you are ready. The tactile sensation of this book in your fingers could be the cue. The sound of these words in your head might be enough. You could attain enlightenment right now, if you are ready.

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

Someone else brought up thinking about the goals of mindfulness in daily life. The goal of sit down meditation is to be mindful of the 3 marks of existence: impermanence, dukha, and anatta. I find remember that adds value. When I first got involved with Buddhist meditation in the 90s it was with a Thich Nhat Hanh group. Somehow I missed a memo. It seemed like mindfulness was an end in itself. The people who seemed to be blissing out because they were aware of the dish soap bubbles while washing their dishes seemed silly to me. Focusing the mind to apply awareness - mindfulness can be relaxing and seeing things you don't see can be interesting. So there is value in it. I just think there is more value in remembering that mindfulness of the 3 marks makes things more meaningful/valuable/liberating. Does being aware of ones breathing during the 2 minutes of a long traffic light have a chance of doing that? I don't know. Maybe at the least it is a a drop in the bucket in keeping the mind toned the way taking the stairs may not make you fit, but will keep some strength in your legs.

In reading the scriptures, there are two kinds of mistakes:One mistake is to cling to the literal text and miss the inner principles.The second mistake is to recognize the principles but not apply them to your own mind, so that you waste time and just make them into causes of entanglement.

bodom wrote:I have always found these suggestions from Bhante G. very helful:

Chapter 15

Meditation In Everyday Life

As someone who has typed in passages from books, I appreciate your effort and thank you for it

In reading the scriptures, there are two kinds of mistakes:One mistake is to cling to the literal text and miss the inner principles.The second mistake is to recognize the principles but not apply them to your own mind, so that you waste time and just make them into causes of entanglement.

For myself, I keep it simple. For this I borrow ideas from my entrance into Buddhism which was through Mahayana (Ew!!! I know right! *sarcasm disclaimer*), which taught me being present post meditation. The simple example a learned from and found relatable was when my teacher said "When you are doing dishes, you are there doing the dishes. Present in each action and you're completely present."

Relating this to the untrained it is common to be doing more than just washing the dishes. Such as, fretting bills, relationships, problem solving, etc. even though the present moment contains dish washing, the dish washer is not present in that moment of activity. I was only able to learn present awareness through the practice of meditation. After learning mindfulness, and after some time, present awareness could be applied to more complex activities beyond mindfulness of breathing.

Since then I have learned the ebb and flow that is present in more complex examples such as at work. My profession is an engineer, so my labor is often mental and sometimes physical (tearing things apart, etc). Applying the technique of awareness on the pillow has made it possible to carry it on in daily life. I can see some of the more subtle undercurrents of the mind. In the end, if you try and force mindfulness, you will be un-mindfully mindful. From my experience daily mondfulness is started on the pillow where the stream of mindfulness is experienced, then one may more easily ease into that same stream when off the pillow. It is not facilitated through well versed tradition or technique. It's a natural capability of the mind to do so by presenting it with the right conditions through the basics of mindfulness meditation.

My advice is to "keep it simple stupid". The teachings for mindfulness are simple. Follow them simply unto your understanding and the mind will naturally enter the stream of mindfulness, which will help with day to day mindfulness.

Spiny Norman wrote:... but what about when our mind is busy? Surely we can be mindful of that too?

thats a good question. how does one's mind come to a state of being busy?

surely the deliberate effort to try and note everything that one is doing will keep the mind busy. and on top of that, when there is any free moment, entertain all the other thoughts that are generated through your senses, memory, stray thoughts, thoughts planted by other beings.. how can anyone establish mindfulness this way? the mind is never naturally busy, it can only be deliberately busy. and whenever the mind is busy, there is no mindfulness to be experience. there is chaos. maybe focus or concentration depending on the activity being performed but that is just mundane mindfulness and that doesn't help our progress one bit.